Trumpets and Bookmarks
by Isobel Morgan
Summary: Just why are these Mrs Gideon's favourite things? And why can she never remember who Howard is?


Mrs Gideon seems to get as bit of a hard time in fanfic (although I suppose if you're writing Howince/Vinward slash/fluff fiction, that's not surprising) but I feel a bit sorry for her. I don't know if Mrs Gideon ever had an intended first name, and what was supposed to have happened to Mr Gideon, but this is my version.

It was going to be funny, but it just didn't turn out that way when I started writing it.

**Disclaimer**: Anything you recognise, probably isn't mine. Everything else, is.

**Trumpets and Bookmarks**

Anthony and Amelia Gideon were happy. Truly happy. They didn't know it, but they were the envy of their friends for how much in love they were and how happy this made them.

True, they were often apart; Anthony, a celebrated Jazz trumpeter, was away on tour several months of the year and when Amelia wasn't lecturing, her research into the lives of the snakes of Africa and Asia meant she frequently made trips abroad, far out of the range of any human contact. But they'd become good at inventing new ways to make it less difficult, such as agreeing to read the same books when away, each using a bookmark that the other had chosen for them. Subsequently, both had amassed a ridiculous number of bookmarks, but it made the separation easier to bear, and the time they spent together all the better, so that they got used to being apart.

Amelia, especially, had spent much of her childhood travelling. Anthony teased her about her wandering accent, a bizarre mixture of her mother's Italian, her father's Eastern European and everywhere that she'd ever lived.

The only daughter of two renowned botanists, she'd grown up living out of a suitcase, moving from one remote tropical paradise to another as her parents hunted down exotic plants. They'd both taken their vocations seriously, leaving the young Amelia free to roam, chasing snakes and lizards across beaches and jungles. It had seemed quite natural to her to pursue this interest as an adult, and had gained quite a reputation in the field of the care of reptiles.

Anthony, however, hated snakes. They made his skin crawl, even when he saw how much his wife's eyes lit up whenever they fell upon a rainbow boa, or a newly-hatched anaconda. It was a sign of how much he loved Amelia that he didn't run away screaming. Amelia, in turn, didn't much care for trumpets or jazz. She sat through many of Anthony's concerts, smiling politely, but secretly bored to distraction.

But despite these differences, these obstacles to overcome, they were happy.

They had been married for five years now, although in reality they'd probably spent only about half of that together. So to remedy this, the Gideons decided to take a trip together. Naturally, Anthony wanted to go to a Jazz festival in New Orleans while Amelia had her eye on a little-known island that she'd heard housed some spectacular examples of exotic snakes, and neither wanted to do what they other suggested.

As a compromise, they agreed on nowhere with snakes and nowhere with the likelihood of jazz and found a travel agency that specialised in unusual holidays. Signing up for an alternative tour of Europe, they spent a very pleasant two weeks visiting vineyards, trekking on donkeys and trying things they'd never even thought about doing before.

Driving back home from the airport, Amelia felt her head nodding from jet-lag and fatigue. It had seemed a good idea at the time to stay up all night flamenco dancing with the couple from Barcelona, but now she was exhausted.

"I'm dozing off, Mr Gideon," she announced sleepily.

Her husband glanced over from where he'd folded his tall body into the small space behind the steering wheel, his hair even more unkempt than usual from the travelling. Even his moustache looked untidy.

"That's OK. You have a nap, Mrs Gideon."

It was an affectation that had developed over the course of their marriage to call each other 'Mr' and 'Mrs' rather than by their first name, something their friends found both sweet and rather irritating.

And so Amelia fell asleep, an instantly deep sleep, so much so that she wasn't immediately woken by the screeching of brakes and crunching of metal as the other car slammed into them, sending their car spinning across the road to collide with a tree. Amelia felt the impact, but barely had time to register more than "what?' before unconsciousness overtook her again.

The ceiling was white, an almost perfect blank, except for one small crack in the paint in the left hand corner.

Amelia blinked.

What ceiling? This wasn't home. Where was she?

She tried to sit up, found herself held into bed by a number of tubes and cables wound around her. Her head hurt rather a lot.

"Oh!" Said a rather shocked voice nearby. She turned her head and saw a young man in a white coat standing by her bed, clipboard in hand. He was looking at her oddly, his face pale, and Amelia found herself almost absent-mindedly admiring his hair, feather cut with blond highlights, implying rather more care was put into it than she would have expected from a doctor.

"You're awake!" the young man exclaimed, blue eyes opening wider.

"Um. I'd better… um… I'll go get someone."

He turned and fled, leaving Amelia to examine her situation. She appeared to be in hospital. But why? And where was Tony?

And then another voice piped up, adding to her growing puzzlement; "Who's Tony?"

The doctor shone a light into her right eye, then her left, then back into the right. It didn't stop her head from hurting.

"Can you tell me your name?" She asked, handing the small torch to the student doctor Amelia had seen on waking.

Amelia thought about this. She should know, shouldn't she?

Eventually, a name rose out of the fog in her brain.

"Mrs Gideon," she replied.

The doctor frowned.

"And your first name?"

Mrs Gideon thought some more.

"I don't think I have one."

The other woman's eyebrows rose sharply.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course. Don't you think I'd remember something like that?"

"And Mr Gideon? Do you remember him?"

Mrs Gideon tilted her head to one side as she considered this.

"No."

"I see. Well, I'm sorry to tell you this, Mrs Gideon, but you've been involved in an accident. Your husband was killed, I'm afraid, and you seem to be suffering from some kind of trauma-induced amnesia."

"Really?" Mrs Gideon was rather surprised to hear the doctor's diagnosis.

"If that's true, shouldn't I remember that?"

The doctor chose not to reply, turning to her young colleague and consulting him in low, hushed tones.

Mrs Gideon searched her mind, but could come up with nothing other than vague puzzlement. There did seem to be something she'd forgotten, but she had no idea what it was. Had she been going somewhere?

As the female doctor left the room, the young man with the spectacular hair moved closer, blue eyes fixing on hers.

"Mrs Gideon? My name's Viktor Black. I wondered if you'd like to talk? I'm planning on specialising in psychiatric medicine. I'm especially interested in memory disorders."

"Oh. That's nice. You're a nice boy." Mrs Gideon smiled, wondering why he wanted to talk to her. She didn't have a memory disorder. Did she?

He really did have nice hair.

Mrs Gideon didn't have to stay in hospital long. It turned out she wasn't really hurt, although people kept on asking her questions she couldn't answer, that made no sense. People kept on coming to see her, telling her how sorry they were, but she couldn't remember what is was they were sorry about. They kept talking about 'Tony' but Mrs Gideon couldn't think of anyone called Tony. Who were they talking about? Some things made more sense. She could remember her snakes, those she kept as pets and those she'd been studying, but everything else kept slipping away from her.

She felt perfectly happy, although sometimes she found herself feeling confused, and at other times, she'd find herself crying for no reason, as if she'd forgotten why she was upset without losing the feeling.

Still, life went on, and people didn't seem to mind helping her out whenever she forgot what she was supposed to be doing, or how to do something, or where she lived, things like that. Some things came back to her, but others remained just out of reach, slipping from her mind, leaving her for much of the time in a vague dreamy state. Several times people came around to ask if she wanted to come back to work, but that was plain silly. She couldn't remember anything about work, especially not whatever it was these people she didn't recognise were talking about.

No, what she wanted to do was look after snakes. One of her pets had died, and she wanted to get another one, but then the thought had occurred. Why not look after lots of snakes instead, ones where she didn't have to pay for their food and vets bills?

The zoo, now that was perfect. She'd visited a nearby zoo soon after coming out of hospital, drawn to it for reasons she hadn't quite understood. After a happy afternoon in the Reptile House, she'd forgotten all about her problems. Perhaps she should ask them if they needed a zoo keeper?

It was raining when Mrs Gideon went down to the Zooniverse. She had to argue with the woman on admissions for quite some time before she was allowed in without paying, under strict instructions only to go to the manager's office.

Mrs Gideon was tempted to have another look around the zoo deliberately to wind up the admissions woman, but she all too quickly forgot what she was supposed to be doing and was soon wandering without quite knowing where she was supposed to be.

A man appeared before her, tall, with untidy hair and a nervous expression. For a moment, he was so familiar it almost hurt to look at him. The hair, the eyes, his moustache… what was it? Had she met him before? Perhaps she had… his name wasn't… Tony?

"Hello there," the man said, pretending to be confident and suave but clearly sweating and uncomfortable.

"I saw you come in and I thought, now there's a woman who enjoys the company of animals. Was there anything in particular you came to see?"

Mrs Gideon thought about it.

"Snakes."

"Snakes?" the man seemed surprised.

"Snakes and reptiles."

"Oh. Well, we have a variety of both snakes and reptiles here at the zoo. Perhaps if you'd like I could show you…"

Mrs Gideon smiled politely, but her attention was slipping away from the man already. Her eye fell on the nametag on his uniform: Howard Moon.

He wasn't called Tony after all. She didn't know him, had just thought she did for a moment. The man's features blurred before her, almost as if her mind was trying to deliberately forget him, as if that was the easiest route to take, avoiding something she couldn't face up to.

"Are you the manager?" she asked, as something surfaced in her brain. Something she should be doing…

The man's face fell.

"No, that's… did you want to see the manager?"

"Yes. I'm here about a job," she replied, as the memory came back, more solid than anything had been for a long time.

"Oh, well, in that case," Howard brightened visibly. "I can take you to his office."

He led her along a bewildering series of identical corridors to a door bearing the plaque: _Bob Fossil: Zoo Manager._

"Good luck!" The man said, knocking on the door and opening it for her, but Mrs Gideon's attention slid off him like the proverbial water from a duck's back.

By the time she was inside the office, he was forgotten entirely.

The meeting with Mr Fossil was confusing, not just for Mrs Gideon, but apparently for him too. The odd little man in the too-tight shirt kept coming out with the most random sentences, breaking into song and making up childish names for the animals in the zoo until Mrs Gideon began to suspect that this man wasn't the zoo manager at all but a random lunatic who'd wandered into the office, eaten the real manager, taken his place and that nobody had noticed.

The entire zoo seemed rather odd to Mrs Gideon, but then so did much of the world since the accident, and she couldn't be entirely sure how much of that was her fault and how much the world. Still, the outcome of the meeting was that he'd pretty much offered her the position of Head of Reptiles at his Zooniverse on the spot. Hadn't wanted to see any credentials, asked for references or anything like that. Instead, he'd been thrilled to discover she knew the names of "the big long people with no legs that hiss", even more so when she'd said, yes she did know how to tell which was the man and which the lady snake.

"That's amazing!" he cried, eyes gleaming in delight. "Start tomorrow! I don't care when, just show up! I'll have someone show you round!"

He picked up a microphone and yelled into it:

"Moon! Get in here right now!"

The sound bounced around the room, echoing from speakers outside, and before it had faded away, another man burst into the office. Almost as if he'd been waiting at the door, in fact.

Mrs Gideon glanced over at the man, and again felt a peculiar twist in her heart. Perhaps she'd known someone like him, once. A tall, moustached man, with rumpled hair and small eyes that shone at her. But it was like trying to keep hold of melting butter. Even as he was talking to her, Mrs Gideon forgot who he was.

The man, something Moon, prattled at her nonstop as he gave her a tour of the zoo, but she barely heard him. Her attention was caught by the wonderful array of reptiles she now had to care for, and that pushed anything else out of her brain.

"So… Mrs Gideon, eh? Is there a Mr Gideon?" the man asked, trying to sound casual and failing miserably.

Mrs Gideon considered the question.

"I don't know," she replied, peering through the glass of yet another enclosure. Inside was a gorilla, sitting behind a bush that was failing to conceal the drum kit hidden within it. Mrs Gideon could have sworn that the gorilla raised its head to her in a nod and said, "Alright?" But she put that down to the general strangeness of the zoo.

As time went by, Mrs Gideon became used to the Zooniverse, and in no time at all she was loving her job, loving the reptiles and making friends with her fellow keepers, no matter how peculiar they all seemed. More and more of her old self came back too, until she felt as normal as she believed she'd ever done. She even started to remember things about the past, although nothing seemed to explain why she had such an enormous number of trumpets and bookmarks in her house.

She started listening to the jazz records in the living room and while she couldn't remember liking them, she supposed she must have done, once. Did she play the trumpet, too? Perhaps if she tried it, she could remember. She wasn't sure about the bookmarks, but maybe that would come back too, if she gave it time.

She bought more pets too. On the urging of a fellow keeper, she had a fishpond installed in her garden and stocked it with Koi carp, which she found to be an utter delight. She soon learned how to get Bob Fossil to give her money to bring in more reptiles, too and eventually she managed to acquire her prize, a magnificent python.

"What'll you call him?" asked the new keeper, a nice boy with lovely hair and big blue eyes. Mrs Gideon liked him immediately, not sure why she felt so drawn to him – perhaps he reminded her of someone? Someone with nice hair who'd been kind to her once before. It was all part of the vagueness she felt when she tried to think back to the accident, or before, but this no longer bothered her.

"Hmm?"

"The python," the young lad prompted. "What's his name?"

Mrs Gideon stared at the snake, curled up behind the glass of his new home.

"Tony," she replied finally.

"Tony? Why Tony?"

"I… I'm not sure. But he looks like a Tony, don't you think?" Mrs Gideon asked, with more certainty than she felt.

The nice boy smiled at her, a wonderful grin that lit up the room, and Mrs Gideon found herself smiling back.

"What was your name again?" she asked.

"I'm Vince," he told her, pointing at the name patch on his jacket. He'd customised it, decorating his name with little glittery stars, something Mrs Gideon found utterly charming.

"Do you like working here, Vince?"

"Oh yeah, it's great! Howard said I'd be good at being a zookeeper, but I wasn't sure. But I love all the animals, and everyone's really nice."

"Who is Howard?" Mrs Gideon asked, puzzled.

"Howard's my best friend. You know, tall guy… moustache… looks like he hasn't had a hair cut since 1979?" Vince gestured with his hands but this didn't help. Mrs Gideon couldn't think of anyone at the zoo who fitted that description.

Although there did seem to be new keepers around a lot, men who couldn't have stayed long because none ever settled in her memory. Mrs Gideon had come to the conclusion that there must be an agency somewhere that supplied the zoo with temporary workers, a never ending supply of forgettable men who were always looking for more challenging work to move on to. Certainly they all wanted to talk to her about the book or poem they were writing, the film they were going to make or music they'd created. It never once occurred to her that they were in fact all the same man, a man she could never remember because her mind couldn't cope with how much he reminded her of another man, one she'd lost a lifetime ago, a life she didn't even know that she'd had.

Poor Howard. For all he watched her, tried to talk to her, to tell her how he felt, he never stood a chance. And not for the reasons he or any of the other keepers thought, any more than Vince could know that when Mrs Gideon looked at him, she was remembering a young doctor who'd helped her regain her memory after an accident snatched it away.

But Mrs Gideon didn't know this either, and she was happy. Sometimes she felt strange, like she knew something was missing, but mostly she was content. She had the zoo, her snakes, her friends, her fish, a life.

And, of course, she had lots and lots of trumpets and bookmarks.


End file.
